The City of Emporia is planning to utilize an alternate funding source to help cover the cost of the 2020 Street Rehabilitation project.
During their regular action session, Wednesday evening commissioners unanimously voted to table awarding a bid for the project until their May 6 action session in two weeks. Originally the project’s cost was to be covered through the city’s multi-year fund, however, city manager Mark McAnarney suggested the city split the cost between the multi-year fund and federal exchange funds.
As KVOE recently reported the city is anticipating a significant drop in sales tax revenues, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on local businesses. However, as there is a roughly two-month lag time between when taxes are collected and reported the full scope of the impact is not clear at this time.
With the multi-year fund being generated by sales tax revenues, McAnarney believes splitting the cost would help to preserve the fund until the city gains a more thorough understanding of the impending financial impacts. According to McAnarney, the city is willing to cover up $500,000 of the project’s cost through the federal exchange funds.
The city will use the next two weeks to assess how much money will be needed from each fund before officially awarding the bid on May 6. The city received two bids for the project with the low bid coming from Killough Construction Inc. of Ottawa at $957,191.95.
20 to 25 different streets across Emporia will see some level of rehabilitation work over a 30-day span between June and July as part of the project according to McAnarney.
In other business, commissioners also took time to recognize the city’s finance department for receiving the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Associations of the US and Canada. This is the 34th consecutive year that the city has received the honor.
The city commission will reconvene for a virtual study session next Wednesday. The general public may view the meeting on the city’s Facebook page.
